Monday, February 15, 2010

"Of all the areas investigated by developmental psycholinguists, the acquisition of grammar has been studied the must intesive. Much of this can be related to the development of transformational - generative (TG) grammar, the most influential school of linguistics to affect the study of language over the past four decades. It has always been involved most centrally with the study of sentences."

1) A dictionary has many thousands of words but not just any words can be put together to make a sentence.

2) Grammar must still be our concern, especially because English is not our native language. If we are not going to take it seriously, there will always be something missing.

3) On of the example why rules in sentences / paragraphs were invented because of the following sample lines:

Ancient Greek writers saw the difficulty of reading this kind of line...So, about twenty five hundred years ago, they began to place a short line under or beside the words in a sentence that began a new topic or idea. They called this line paragraphos, which means " writing beside".

" Finally, it is quite rare for youngsters to repeat the same word twice in forming their little sentences; children are parsimonious with their language and make each word count." ( pg.15 - SURVEY ACQUISITION)

In my opinion, " parsimonious", is a wrong choice of word. Because, if we are going to look the meaning of the word in the dictionary it doesn't match. Children are not parsimonous with their language but rather they are just restricted/bounded with words or phrases due to lack of exposure.

Language is always changing. It changes from century to century, from day to day, from person to person, from place to place. Like a flowing river, language is never quite the same today as it was yesterday.

Same with learning the second language, there are many alternatives-theories, teaching methods, different learners, different environments different teachers, different gadgets etc. In addition to what Ellis suggests that of the second language – attitude, motivation, learning strategy and personality. These factors too, are the proofs why a child could learn the second language compares to adult. A child will not argue nor debate his/her English teacher in regards to grammar things nor translate from Language 1 to Language 2. They just look, listen and repeat. Input from the teachers sets the wheels in motion rather than creating the wheels of language. Finding topics of conversation that can be mutually understood, speaking at a slow pace, repeating important phrases, stressing the key words in a sentence will keep the input factor in second language.In my case, during session hours – per hour, I made him/her (student) to answer more than 100 questions…per topic conversation, at least 10 to 30 questions, not to mention the remaining hour for listening and reading to complete the two hour sessions.

Output result:With the above mentioned strategy, we may conclude that a person may understand a language but, through lack of meaningful practice, speak that second language less than fluency…”We learn to speak a second language when given the opportunity to speak it.”Gardner and Lambert originally considered that integrative motivation was more powerful in language learning than instrumental motivation. In my opinion, I disagree on their consideration saying that integrative motivation is more powerful. Because, here in the Philippines learners most priority is to get a job and have sturdy future. And call center agent, English teacher and workers that could speak English well get the most chance of securing an opportunity either local or abroad; “Money makes the world go round”, now a days and not to find their roots or form friendship (as in integrative motivation).